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"Best" mini-monitor?

I have a relatively small listening room (12x10) and have always owned mini-monitors.  Currently I have proac tablette anniversaries, but have had the original 15 ohm rogers ls3/5a, proac response 1, KEF, and reference 3a through out the years.  As you can see, these are all moderate priced speakers, having never spent more than 3k on any pair.  I am now in a position to spend a bit more money, certainly 5k, and maybe up to 10k.  So what out there should I be listening to?  I am in the Chicago area, so I would love something that I can listen to at a local (Midwest) dealer, but I do travel a lot and have auditioned/purchased things across the country from time to time.  New or used, does not matter to me.

as you can probably guess, I really don't care much about deep base, but live for soundstage and warm midrange, listening to a lot of female vocalists, acoustic rock/jazz/blues, and light (non full orchestra) classical.  

With my musical tastes, I have always loved el34 tube amps.  I currently have the prima Luna hp premium, which has 4 el34 per channel, giving me in the 70 wpc range, more than enough for a small room.  I am running naim digital source material (no bad remarks from the analog folks... I know I have have traded off).

so, what should I spend time auditioning?  I have used "best" in quotes because of the 10k price limit, but I suspect there are many more candidates below 10k than above it.

thanks.

Bill


meiatflask
mitch2
3,737 posts
 
Long ago I had a pair of ADS speakers and never (NEVER) was
disappointed with the sound, whether i was listening to classical, jazz, rock, female vocals, whatever.
Me too, ADS L810s, which I stupidly sold a long time ago.  Finally found the same level of enjoyment with Aerial speakers, designed by Michael Kelly (formerly designer for ADS).

As large monitors, I now have Aerial LR5s on Sound Anchor stands and, along with two Aerial SW12 subs, I have not heard a better speaker system in my room.  As long as you have the power (to drive the lowish efficiency of the LR5s) there is no practical volume limit in a moderately large room.  Very dynamic yet smooth, with great tone and a touch of warmth (maybe due to paper drivers).   At Kelly's suggestion, I run the LR5s full range and roll in the subs at around 40Hz, but if I was aware of a very high quality high-pass crossover that would not affect sonics in the upper frequency ranges then I would try it. 
chrshanl37
833 posts
 
I am a big fan of ADS as well and have owned 520, 710. 810, 980, 1090, 1530, l8e, l9e, 620, 520, sat 7 and for me the sleeper was the l9e’ however they are very rare. The 710’s still remain my go to recommendation for people on a budget that want good sound for little $$. They are easy to drive and there is something about that soft dome midrange that just sounds right to me.

I’ve moved on to Speaker Art now and have yet to find a standmount that I like better after hearing and ownin many others. The one that comes closest are the Ryan R610’s. For the money and size they are tough to beat. I would like to checkout aerials at some point, I had a pair of the ERA d5’s that he designed for Peachtree and they were pretty impressive little speakers.
bstbomber's avatar
bstbomber
73 posts
 
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